


you, or your memory

by TheSpaceCoyote



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Accidental Force Healing, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Death Fix, First Kiss, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Minor Violence, Resurrection, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Spoilers, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:40:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22026475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSpaceCoyote/pseuds/TheSpaceCoyote
Summary: Kylo Ren discovers what has become of his general, and refuses to let go.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren
Comments: 41
Kudos: 585





	you, or your memory

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Ты, или Воспоминания о тебе](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23532649) by [Lenuchka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lenuchka/pseuds/Lenuchka)



> Another fix it! I'm not sure what else to say about this one, other than I promise it ends happily.

It was by accident that Kylo interrupted a group of four stormtroopers hastening through the hallways of the _Steadfast_ , carrying a limp bundle wrapped in black between them. They were muttering amongst themselves, and though Kylo couldn’t make much out before they noticed him and quickly quieted each other, he sensed apprehension leaking out of their minds. 

“Supreme Leader, sir.” The trooper nearest to Kylo addressed him. “We were just—”

“On whose authority do you leave your posts?” Kylo rasps through his mask. Worn out from his fruitless journey to Kijimi—the girl having eluded him once again—he found himself with little patience for the usual hesitant fear troopers had in his presence. 

“I—” the trooper cleared his throat, “Allegiant General Pryde, sir, he instructed us to...dispose of some refuse. His words.”

That didn’t explain much, only muddying the waters further, as trash collection was hardly the duty of troopers. Kylo clumped closer, suspicion aroused even further by the mention of Pryde’s involvement. The man’s sudden appearance and offering of aid to the First Order had been welcome but uncannily timed—Kylo trusted few people amongst his subordinates, and Pryde was a scheming snake if ever he saw one. 

“Do not lie to me.” Kylo raised his hand, more exasperated than angry, truly. “What is in there?”

None of them answered him, but the universe saw it fit to answer his question anyway. One of the stormtroopers shifted their grip on the bundle out of nerves, causing part of the wrapping to become unraveled. Something tumbled out and hung limply, drawing Kylo’s eyes downwards to see what it was. Beneath the mask, they widened, and he sharply drew in a breath. 

It was a hand. Sheathed in black leather, fine-fingered, with only a strip of silvery-cream flesh visible at the wrist. 

All of the four stormtroopers hit the walls at once, armor scraping against durasteel as Kylo pushed them higher and higher by their throats. He caught the bundle as it fell, cradling it in his arms and not letting it hit the ground. It felt heavy and cold. Kylo suddenly found himself unable to swallow, muscles in his throat painfully stuck as he stared at the wrapped body in his arms. 

The stormtroopers slid down to the floor as Kylo broke all of their necks with a resounding _crack_. He flew over their lifeless bodies, a fury of flurried black clothing as he stormed off down the hallway and vanished without care about who would find the carnage he’d left in his wake. 

* * *

The empty conference room was cold as a tomb, soundless apart from the ragged heave of Kylo’s breathing. 

The shroud carelessly wrapping the body in his arms disintegrated with a thought, sloughing off onto the floor, where they burnt into sparks and then nothingness. Kylo stiffened as he looked down at the body cradled in his arms, last scrap of hope that he had been wrong dashed as he looked upon the disturbingly peaceful face of General Hux. 

Kylo blinked rapidly, taking another deep breath. 

He laid Hux out on the black metal slab of the command table, taking care not to let his head fall back and crack against the hard surface. A part of him knew there was little need, but the disrespectful treatment the stormtroopers had shown him—their former _commander_ —still stung in his heart. Hux, no matter how vicious and haughty he’d been in life, didn’t deserve that. 

He didn’t deserve any of this. 

Kylo took Hux’s limp wrists in hand and laid them across the general’s chest, adjusting them until his palms lay cupped over the wound burnt through his skin. Kylo studied it briefly, before covering it up. Pristine black gabardine and flesh alike burnt, all blood spilled cauterized before a drop could hit the ground. A quick death. Had Hux even knew what had hit him, who had done this, before he was ripped away from the mortal world forever? Kylo had no way of knowing, and thinking about it made the stinging pain in his own chest only swell with regret. 

Despite it all, Hux looked beautiful. Kylo had thought that many times before, how beautiful Hux looked, especially when the stark glow of the old hallways in the _Finalizer_ illuminated the flawless pallor of his skin, or when, on the rare planet-side trip, the sun made his hair glow like a beacon of fire atop a dark, snow-swept mountaintop, calling Kylo to summit it, to make its peak his home. 

Kylo ran his fingers through Hux’s hair, letting the red locks limply slide against the leather of his gloved palm. From there, he trailed his hand down the side of Hux’s face, thankful for the material of his gloves preventing him from feeling the stricken cold of his general’s flesh, a cold that might break him worse than the flurried snows of Kijimi or even the sterile, sepulchral frigidity of the conference room around him now. 

He had thought Hux looked beautiful many, many times before, yet only now when he lay dead before him, did Kylo properly appreciate it. Now, when it was doomed to fade away, to wither and rot beneath Kylo’s hands, that beauty and intelligence ephemeral and lost due to some traitorous blaster bolt, due to Kylo’s own hubris in trusting a man scrounged from the darkest corners of the galaxy rather than he who had been by Kylo’s side—albeit, also at his throat—for nearly six years now. 

He couldn’t waste the precious little time he had left with Hux. 

Kylo took off his helmet, like one might doff their hat at a funeral, and placed it atop the slab at Hux’s feet. He exhaled through his nose as he remembered Hux’s comment on his repaired mask, the barely contained disdain, perhaps even a scrap of amusement, as had always been Hux’s way. 

Kylo leaned over the table, scanning Hux’s body, stopping on his face. The chalky pallor his skin took on now brought out the tender pink of Hux’s lips, still looking so soft and plump despite the fact that blood had long stopped flowing through them. Kylo stared, unduly enthralled by the slightly parted mouth that just barely showed the pearly tips of the general’s teeth. 

Never before had he kissed Hux’s lips, unless one counted his dreams, which might have mattered before but not now. He could no longer let himself live in dreams, not when his last chance to kiss Hux lay before him. Kylo braced his palms against the cold slab, bending over Hux’s prone body until their noses nearly touched, until he could’ve looked Hux right in the dead steel of his stare were his eyes still open. For a moment Kylo paused, visually mapping the way Hux looked this close up, committing it to memory, so that someone who cared enough about the general out here in the vastness of the galaxy could preserve it forever, even when Hux’s legacy and visage would crumble with the weight of time and death. Odd, that this duty would fall to Kylo, but there was no else. Hux had no friends, no living family. No one but Kylo.

So he memorized it all, trembling in his soft scrutiny. Everything, from the filigree veins of pink in Hux’s eyelids, to the solitary mole on his cheek, to the apt contrast of his strong jawline and soft, delicate chin, Kylo imprinted in his mind, and only when he felt sure he could conjure it up later when the full weight of Hux’s death ground into his bones for good did Kylo finally let his eyes fall shut to brush his lips to the corpse’s in a soft—almost chaste in its reverence and pain—kiss. 

For a couple of seconds, he remained like that, bent over Hux’s body, hands braced against the slab on both sides of his head. Kylo wanted to keep the kiss just a brief touch of lips, but as he pressed his warmth to Hux’s dead chill he found he couldn’t resist pushing further. He felt almost compelled. It was as if he could possibly impart some of his own warmth, his own _life_ , into Hux’s body, impossible as that was. Still, he tried, in a fit of desperation, his hand coming up to cradle Hux’s frigid cheek as he deepened the kiss, letting out a distraught, pathetic little whimper as he found himself wishing Hux could kiss back. 

He kissed Hux for so long, lost in his own grief, that he didn’t notice where his own warmth ended and that which he’d given Hux began. He kept kissing, kept whimpering and nearly sobbing, his tears flecking Hux’s face, up until something firm thumped him in the chest and forced him to break the seal with a cough. 

“...R-Ren…” came a voice out of nowhere, “what the _hell_ was that about?”

Kylo’s heart leaped into his throat and he reared away from the table. Instinctively he looked around, on edge, feeling like he would find a taunting hologram, or perhaps just an officer with a similar timbre. But he was alone, alone. 

Except—

“Are...are you going to explain to me what you were doing, or are you just going to gawk about like a fool?”

Kylo’s eyes snapped back to the slab, just in time to see the dead body of Armitage Hux prop itself up on his elbows and stare him in an exact facsimile of the same disapproving sneer Hux had been shooting his way for the past six years. Kylo’s jaw dropped, eyes widening, voice failing.

“Ah. So...gawk it is, then?”

Any further snark from Hux cut off in a yelp as he suddenly found himself wrapped up in Kylo’s arms and clutched tightly to his chest. Hux wheezed, wriggling in the embrace as Kylo buried his face into the general’s shoulder and let out a weak sob of relief. 

“Ren?” Hux questioned, sounding more confused than angry now, his hands coming up to pat in uncertain comfort against Kylo’s back. “What...what in the stars has happened to you?”

Kylo sniffed, letting out a wet laugh. He squeezed Hux closer, almost unable to believe it was anything more than a hallucination brought upon by his mad grief, but Hux’s heart beat warm and strong against his chest. Alive. Undeniably. Kylo was so overwhelmed by that simple fact that he almost forgot to muster up the strength to respond to Hux’s inquiry. 

“Nothing...nothing happened to me, but…” Kylo lifted his head, until he was nose to nose with the general. “You were...you were _dead_ , Hux. I felt it. There was nothing left.”

“Dead?” One of Hux’s eyebrows raised. Kylo could see him thinking. “But how...that’s not possible.”

Kylo didn’t say anything, instead releasing one arm from around Hux. His fingers found the hole in Hux’s uniform, still there, despite the fact that the wound beneath had healed with new, pink flesh. Hux looked down, eyes narrowing in confusion for a moment before they opened wide. 

“Ah.” Hux’s fingers traced over Kylo’s knuckles. “Then...Ren, how?”

“I don’t know,” Kylo whispered, entire body trembling, lips caught between a grin and further relieved sobbing. “But you are. You _are_.”

Before, Kylo had mourned the realization that he would never be able to kiss Hux while his lips were brimming with warmth, his body responsive and spirit lively. But he surges forward now to capture his general’s mouth again—then again, and again, until Hux set aside his confusion and reciprocated, arms coming to wrap around Kylo’s neck and draw him in even closer. 

Kylo’s heart sang, grief replaced by pure bliss and catharsis. By some miracle, the Force had decided to return Hux to his side. And Kylo wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice. He wouldn’t waste the gift of life he’d given to Hux. 

“Now, Armitage,” Kylo murmured when he pulled back, palm pressed over the healed wound in his general’s chest as a vengeful smirk passed over his face, “tell me. Who was the bastard that did this to you?”

**Author's Note:**

> RE: Hux being the spy, I sort of like the headcanon that he's more helping the Resistance because he figured out Pryde is undermining Kylo by linking directly with Palpatine, rather than just for petty purposes. At least, that's the train of thought I'm following with this fic. 
> 
> I love comments! Do you want to see more TRoS fix-its, or should I go back to AUs and canon-divergent fics? Let me know!
> 
> Hit me up on [Tumblr](http://thethespacecoyote.tumblr.com) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/heir_of_breath7/).


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